Archive | Commentary

Comrades 2017 was a year where the global crisis of capitalism deepened. Just like the 2008 global financial crisis, capitalism demonstrated once more that it has failed humanity and has no solutions for problems that are confronting society.

People tend to have a distorted picture of U.S. capitalism’s operation, believing that the great majority of Americans are doing well, benefiting from the system’s long-term growth and profit generation. Unfortunately, this is not true. Median wealth has been declining, leaving growing numbers of working people increasingly vulnerable to the ups and downs of economic […]

On February 19, 1881, Karl Marx had written a remarkable letter to N.F. Danielson, the renowned Narodnik economist who had also gone under the name of Nikolayon and whose work had been much discussed by Lenin.

Base-Superstructure Theory (BST) is Marx’s guiding general theory, but is long misunderstood. Deeply embedded in a monumental corpus of system-challenging analysis, it has become lost in secondary interpretations with partial takes and opposed propagandas militating against coherent comprehension.

The fights which must be fought and difficulties endured may perhaps be a mite easier and lighter if accompanied by occasional deep breaths of nature with its simple joys, and the freedom hopes, the values and solidarity I sometimes found there and enjoyed so greatly, may also contribute just a little to efforts of good people everywhere in our good cause.

This article, originally written towards the end of 2003, is now published on our website for the first time in English. The odious Iraqi debt is still under-documented today, though it is highly relevant in our research and our proposals against all illegitimate, illegal, odious and unsustainable debts. It is a rare case where a […]

The neoliberal model that has dominated mainstream politics and economics for decades is in crisis.… Mass dissatisfaction has joined with the growing realisation by the managers of the capitalist system that neoliberal policies are incapable of dragging the world economy out of the rut in which it now finds itself 10 years after the onset of the global financial crisis.

For the republican Arab world, the past twelve years have been defined by foreign invasion, civil and proxy wars, revolution and counter-revolution. It has been devastating. However, it should be remembered that, within the republican Arab world, the twenty-first century began with the American backed crushing of the second Palestinian uprising (intifada).

The impasse in forming a government in Germany has dragged on since election day, September 24th—often like a traffic gridlock, hardly moving forward. But Germany is Europe’s main central power—and with no proper government!

This is expanded and updated from an article first published in German in Das Argument: Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften, no. 323 (2017/3); republished with the kind permission of its editors; originally presented in a panel “The Crisis of the Political,” Institut für kritische Theorie, Berlin, June 9, 2017. For their comments and suggestions, I […]

For Capital’s explosive force to truly unfold, not only was education in general necessary, but also knowledge of the relevant economic and philosophical theories, in order to perceive not just the explicit, but also the implicit critiques.

A question that might sound ludicrous to some: what do Trump and liberals have in common? Answer: a penchant for discussing anything other than class and capitalism—seriously.

This talk by Issac Deutscher was originally published in Monthly Review on December 1967 to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of Karl Marx’s Capital. We are making it available here on the occasions of the 150^th anniversary of Capital. In the original editors’ note to this article, 50 years ago Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy wrote: “This is the text of a talk given last summer on the BBC’s Third Programme. It is reproduced here by permission. Isaac Deutscher is the author of distinguished biographies of Stalin and Trotsky, and at the time of his death at the age of 60 last August he was working on a biography of Lenin.” —The Editors

It didn’t affect many people directly, but even small victories are welcome these days. Germany’s Constitutional Court just ruled that no-one should be forced to declare themselves officially male or female. It thus created a third open category anyone can opt for (or be opted by parents when still a child). I think everyone can […]

When President Xi Jinping addressed the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China last month, he spoke of “the scientific truth of Marxism-Leninism”. Marxism (with Chinese characteristics), as President Xi went on to set out, is to be the foundation for a Healthy China.

A hundred years later, the question of the historical legacy of the October Revolution is not an easy one for socialists, given that Stalinism took root within less than a decade after that revolution and the restoration of capitalism seventy years later met little popular resistance.

With its theme a little-known event of over a century ago, the film was ancient in cinema terms, its rather unsuccessful premiere was way back in 1926 and the performance Monday evening marked an event even earlier than that, one which is rarely discussed and even less celebrated. Yet the theatre was sold out and […]

The implications of Marxist state theories developed by Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband are useful for framing issues related to leftist strategy in twenty-first century Venezuela. A relationship exists between each of the theories and three issues facing the Chavista movement: whether the bourgeoisie (or sectors of it) displays a sense of ‘class consciousness’; the viability of tactical and strategic alliances between the left and groups linked to the capitalist structure; and whether socialism is to be achieved through stages, abrupt revolutionary changes, or ongoing state radicalization over a period of time. During Poulantzas’ lifetime, his concept of the state as a ‘strategic battlefield’ lent itself to the left’s promotion of ‘strategic alliances’ with parties to its right. The same concept is compatible with the ‘process of change’ in Venezuela, in which autonomous movements play a fundamental role in transforming the old state and the construction of new state structures.

If newness doesn’t win everyone’s heart, then BEAUTIFUL will definitely do it. Who likes UGLY military equipment? Even the people we slaughter all over the world insist upon good-looking guns and bombs.

Given the thick haze of disinformation surrounding the economic situation in Venezuela, we thought it would be useful to publish the first chapter of The Visible Hand of the Market: Economic Warfare in Venezuela.